Upasna Srivastava

Dr. Upasna Srivastava’s research focuses on defining cell-type specific molecular mechanisms that drive neurodegeneration and resilience in neurological disorders, with particular emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and neuroinflammatory signaling. She is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine and a member of the Rangaraju Laboratory, where she applies integrative neuroinformatics, proteomics, and single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomic approaches to identify disease-modifying pathways across the brain. She received her Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and completed advanced postdoctoral training at the University of Tokyo and the University of California, San Diego. Her interdisciplinary training spans computational biology, large-scale multi-omics integration, and experimental neuroscience, enabling her to bridge wet-lab biology with systems-level data analysis. At the University of Tokyo, her work focused on stem cell biology, organoid modeling, and cancer-associated cellular programs. At UC San Diego, she contributed to genomics and transcriptomics studies investigating immune regulation and asthma pharmacogenetics, strengthening her expertise in translational omics and human disease biology. Her current research integrates proteomics, single-nucleus RNA sequencing, and computational network analyses to investigate how neuroinflammatory stress, ion-channel signaling, and metabolic dysfunction contribute to synaptic, mitochondrial, and cellular resilience in neurodegenerative disease. Her work has identified novel molecular interactions involving Kv1.3 potassium channels and interferon-associated signaling pathways in microglia and immune cells, revealing previously unrecognized mechanisms linking immune activation to neurodegeneration. A central focus of her research is understanding how cell-type specific modulation of these pathways can alter disease trajectories and inform therapeutic strategies.

She has a strong record of peer-reviewed publications, editorial service, and interdisciplinary collaboration, and she is actively engaged in mentoring trainees in bioinformatics and neuroscience. Through her work, she aims to generate mechanistic, data-driven insights that advance precision approaches to targeting neuroinflammation and resilience pathways in neurological disease. Her expertise in integrative multi-omics, neuroinformatics, and translational neuroscience uniquely positions her to contribute substantially to the proposed research.